Wednesday, May 7, 2014

The Good and Bad of Negative Customer Interactions

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou

At SkyPlanner, your best choice for Salesforce consulting and customization in South Florida, we touch upon the issue of customer interaction in many of our social media posts. That's because we believe providing our customers with positive experiences to be equal to, if not greater, in value to any other service or product we could ever provide. In fact, our core values- transparency, integrity, partnership, respect, and accountabiliy- revolve around our dedication to treating our customers as if they are members of the SkyPlanner family, and why we encourage face-to-face meetings (in person or through Skype) instead of phone calls..

Positive customer interactions are key to retaining customers, which in turn is key to keeping a business afloat. Some interesting statistics from a Gartner Group study that supports this include:

A 5% increase in customer retention can increase business profits by 25% to 125%.

80% of future profits will most likely come from just 20% of existing customers.

Repeast customers spend 33% more than new customers.

According to salesforce.com 70% of buying experiences are influenced by how the customer feels they're being treated, and 60-75% of customers are likely to return to a company they feel treated them fairly, even if the end result was not in their favor. Then it is not shocking to see that companies that prioritize positive customer experience generate 60% higher profits than similar competitors who don't put an place a high value on their customers' concerns. Yet many businesses fail to do just that and ignore the very practices that .

Disregard for customer experience doesn't just cost businesses repeat customers. While a satisfied customer might tell, on average, nine other people how happy they are, dissatisfied customers tend to be much more prodigious when sharing their experiences to the tune of a whopping 22 people. This can clearly be seen in the multitude of review sites riddled with negative reviews centered around poor customer interactions (43% of people feel little to no inhibition about lodging complaints when they can do it online), not to mention social media where a single bad customer experience can go viral and spread like wildfire. If you're small business it's even more imperative to keep customers happy. Don't believe the power of word-of-mouth? Please refer to the infographic on the right (courtesy of Milo).

Unfortunately there isn't a set definition for what constitutes good customer interactions because it depends so greatly across industries, and customer types. Luckily this is a case where it is easier to highlight what not to do than what to do. In subsequent blog posts SkyPlanner will be expanding on this issue and diving into ways that our customers can keep their their customers happy and coming back for more business. Stay tuned!